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Poster: ColdRain108 Date: Jul 19, 2013 11:24am
Forum: GratefulDead Subject: Re: ?? wtf ??

Really? (CNN) -- George Zimmerman, set to stand trial in the 2012 shooting death of teenager Trayvon Martin, on Tuesday waived his right to a "stand your ground" pretrial immunity hearing. Zimmerman's attorneys have decided they will try this as a self-defense case. Florida's deadly force law, also called "stand your ground", was passed in 2005. It allows people to meet "force with force" if they believe they or someone else is in danger of being seriously harmed by an assailant. Under the law, a person can use deadly force anywhere as long as he is not engaged in an unlawful activity, is being attacked in a place he has a right to be, and reasonably believes that his life and safety are in danger as a result of an overt act or perceived threat committed by someone else. In a pretrial immunity hearing, a judge would have ruled whether Zimmerman's actions were protected under the "stand your ground" law; a ruling in favor of the defendant would have meant that no criminal or civil trial could proceed. http://www.cnn.com/2013/04/30/justice/florida-zimmerman-defense and: JACKSONVILLE, Fla. -- The George Zimmerman murder trial verdict has promoted anger and confusion in North Florida. And even though it wasn't used as Zimmerman's defense, it has called into question the state's "stand your ground" law. http://www.actionnewsjax.com/content/topstories/story/The-difference-between-stand-your-ground-and-self/HRwjL8noyEigqLYxwXZJ1A.cspx and: Why didn't Zimmerman's defense team use Stand Your Ground? Zimmerman's attorneys themselves dismissed the relevance of the statute, which allows armed citizens to use deadly force with no obligation to retreat from a confrontation if they reasonably believe their lives are threatened. Perhaps Zimmerman's team shied away from using the law—also known as "shoot first"—because they knew it would be controversial and felt that they didn't need it to win on self-defense. They may also have calculated that it would hurt their case, says Laura Cutilletta, a senior attorney at the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence and an expert on state gun laws. "We think the reason the defense did not request a shoot-first hearing or raise the law at trial is because doing so would contradict their theory of the case—that Zimmerman was being held down and beaten and had no opportunity to retreat," she says. "Shoot-first would only be applicable if he was conceding that he had an opportunity to retreat and that instead of doing so, he used deadly force." So while SYG makes splashier headlines, it is just not the case here. Trial by media and popular vote - damn I'm glad we don't have that legal system, or the Italian one where a think tank imagines what happened and charge from there.
This post was modified by Little Sense on 2013-07-19 18:24:44